Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!
-- The Red Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass

Monday, November 08, 2010

Zombies and Faeries and Not Enough Candy (for me)

Our neighborhood sucks at Halloween. We never stay at home handing out candy. Not many people come by, and I always worry that the ones who do could be planning a home invasion. The street by our house is spooky, but not playfully seasonally spooky. I would not be surprised to come home one day to find the entire street closed off by police cars. On the surface our area looks fine. I’ve just never felt like scratching the surface.

So we go to other neighborhoods to trick or treat. A mere few blocks away is a neighborhood where people actually know each other. They even have their own Facebook page. DramaQueen’s best friend ArtistChild lives there, so we weaseled our way into the community trick or treat caravan. ArtistChild’s family have lived in the neighborhood for 11 years and seem to know everyone. We’ve lived in our neighborhood for 3 years and know the neighbors to the right and left. The others seem to live in an alternate reality and have figured out how to teleport in and out of their houses, because we never see them. We got election fliers addressed to at least 5 different people who have lived at our address – we are a neighborhood of transients and hermits.

There's nothing like a home-cooked meal

DramaQueen was a zombie housewife this year. We put her hair in curlers and tied a “bloody” bandage around here hair. She wore an apron splattered with more fake blood and carried a skillet with a bloody brain. That brain was a piece of inspired work, I can tell you. At first I planned to use a cauliflower, but I discovered that cauliflower is friggin heavy. So I found some white playdoh and crafted a very nice brain. I cherish these few moments of ingenuity and accomplishment. We covered her face and arms in sickly grey and black makeup and added more blood. She was fabulous.

FireCracker, on the other hand, will have nothing to do with scary costumes. She was even nervous around her zombie sister. FireCracker was a faery (not a fairy, which is the boring US version). We made use of DramaQueen’s old drama costumes and added some sparkly wings. The wings ended up being larger than Firecracker and were something of a hazard all night, particularly on stairs, where they tended to wonk other kids who were trying to leave.

Not many faeries wear such sporty shoes

ArtistChild went as a Goth, wearing a costume that looked like something I wore back in college. It’s sad when you can find part of your past for sale at Party City.

In the past we’ve usually gone to these planned neighborhoods with all the houses close together and little handkerchief front lawns. You could cover a lot of candy territory very quickly. This year I hadn’t counted on walking a half acre just to get to the door. It seemed annoyingly inefficient.

As the night wore on the teenagers came out. I know some people are really annoyed by trick or treating teenagers. I don’t see why, as long as they are actually in costume and aren’t being jerks. Some of them girls were a little, ah, robust for their costumes, but they seemed to be having fun.

This year the girls made us swear oaths not to touch their candy without them being present. They think we’re sneaky thieves, which we are. Now we’re grumpy reformed thieves. And this year DramaQueen traded her peanut candies, which I usually can count on getting, with ArtistChild. I had to make do with Almond Joys, which I guess no one wants.